The most extreme version of the mindset behind big-government stimulus ideas is the notion that the government can create economic growth by paying people to dig ditches and fill them back up. Second only to that in absurdity is the notion that we should pay soldiers to just be soldiers, and that that is good for the economy.

Conservative hawk Frank Gaffney is pushing the “military-spending-creates-jobs” theme, my colleague Conn Carroll reports. Carroll’s headline buys into the Gaffney-Keynes line: “Defense cuts to cause one million job losses.”